No confrontation.

Reading about the experiences others have with the narcs in their lives, I feel very lucky to be seen as unimportant by mine. I don't know what I'd do if I was constantly persecuted and stalked and hunted down like a missing piece of the narc's heart that he can't live without, every time I exhibited a bit of independence. I'm sure it would have to end in No Contact and all the potentially difficult consequences for my FOC.

My father and I have ceased pretending we cared for each other a couple of decades ago. But we are on polite terms. And I plan to keep this up for as long as it is possible without compromising my integrity.

As it is, I feel, more than anything, like a diplomat dealing with an insane tyrant of a country in possession of nuclear weapons. I may not like or respect the tyrant, but telling him that would not be wise. It would do no good to anyone.

We don't have a relationship and don't really pretend we have one. But he must be getting the illusion of something that makes it worthwhile for him to have any contact with me at all. What?

The illusion of having a daughter and granddaughters? As long as it's only an illusion and he gets no unsupervised time and very little supervised time with them, I'm fine with that.

Our home as his waiting room for an hour or two, twice a week, six months out of the year? That sounds more like it and it's annoying and I'll have to work on strategies to make it rarer. But there's just something about telling one's father - or anyone else, for that matter - "No, you can't come, because I find your presence annoying" that just doesn't agree with me. I've been able to turn him away a few times by making other plans, which confused him greatly, as people having lives outside of him is a difficult concept to grasp for him. I'll need to work on boundaries in this area starting next October, when I'll see him next, I just don't know how to go about it in practical terms yet.

I can't think of anything else he's "getting" from me. When we lived away, we never saw him. It must be the waiting room service he gets. Oh well.